Interview with Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel, creators of Help Me, Mr. Mutt!

The sisters behind The Great Fuzz Frenzy talk about their newest picture book, Help Me, Mr. Mutt!, and the real-life influences behind it.

Q: Janet, your golden retriever, Violet, is present in many of your books, including The Great Fuzz Frenzy (Harcourt 2005). Did you use dog models for the characters in this book?

Janet Stevens: My dogs are in there, both Violet and Houdini, who’s the working dog. She’s a cattle dog.

Susan Stevens Crummel: My daughter’s dog, a papillon named Kit Kat, is the dog on the title page with the wings.

Q: Also, we must ask—was there a real-life cat behind the character of The Queen?

JS: I had a Siamese cat in high school, and had two later, as an adult. Siamese cats seem to epitomize the ultimate “queenness.”

SSC: I have a black cat named Tweeter who rules the house. All cats have a universal “cattitude.”

Q: Tell us about the inspiration for Help Me, Mr. Mutt!

SSC: My husband and I always inherit pets that our kids have adopted. My son has a great dane. He inspired the big dog who helps himself to food on the countertop—ours once ate a blueberry pie and an entire roast. He’s also the inspiration for the dog who calls himself Sleepless in South Dakota. No bed is big enough for him. My daughter’s papillon, Kit Kat, could teach the other dogs in the house to get food. She’s the one who was good at teamwork.

Q: Janet, you often incorporate real photos and other objects in your art process. For example, you scanned real strawberries and raspberries for Cook-a-Doodle-Doo! Tell us about some of the objects you used for Help Me, Mr. Mutt!

JS: Janet: I wanted to give a real-world, semiserious look to certain things in the book. I had Mr. Mutt use an old typewriter, which I found in a restaurant window in Boulder. I took a digital photo of that and scanned it in. I also used wallpaper from old wallpaper samples, which looked more dignified than if I had painted them. The rug underneath the cat is from my bedroom floor; I liked its texture.

Q: This book, in a way, chides lazy and overindulgent pet owners. Are you providing a forum for the dogs, since they can’t speak (or write) for themselves?

JS: It’s true. They may not like costumes that people make them wear. The book parodies people problems. It’s sort of open-ended, not a good or bad judgment, and it’s about problem solving. We want people to think about what it takes to own a dog from a dog’s point of view.

SSC: If dogs could talk, this is what they might say! Every time we wrote a different section, we tried to put ourselves in that dog’s character.

When I present our books to kids, I want to get them involved. I put the kids in the paws of the dog so they have to respond and think like that dog. I pretend I’m Mr. Mutt, and they’re the dog with people problems.